Tag Archives:birthdays

This weekend, we celebrated the boy-o turning 9. He was my first baby. He was the one who made our family of two a family of three, and for a couple of years, he was my closest companion. It was him and I against the world (at least between the hours of 8 am and 4 pm). And now, he’s 9.

I couldn’t be prouder of the young man he has become. He loves to travel and learn about the place he is visiting, he loves history, and writing, and telling jokes. He always can spot a great pun and his laugh is one of the things I love most about him. There’s a gleam in his dark brown eyes when he does it that makes me feel so happy.

He was excited for his birthday which turned into a birthday weekend. We typically make a pretty big deal about birthdays. There doesn’t need to be a correlation between spending a lot and having a fantastic birthday. With Christmas just around the corner, we try to keep birthday gifts less extravagant and as with other years, he opted to have a simple get together with a couple friends at the house. Our family got together on his actual birthday to celebrate with bowling, pizza and cake.

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No matter what we have planned, he is still filled with excitement. We always decorate their bedroom doors while they sleep so that there’s some fanfare when they wake in the morning. And they are able to open gifts from us and their sibling first thing. The entire day is meant to celebrate who they are, and the year that just passed, as well as the year ahead.

He loves it so much, that he hardly ever sleeps the night before. It’s the same thing at Christmas. He was so excited all weekend that his sleep was interrupted. At one point on Saturday night, just before 10 pm, he woke and was thinking it was morning. It took him a long time to settle again.

But we can’t help but smile at the thought. Do you remember being that excited? I’m not sure if I’ve ever been that excited about anything. And certainly, it’s much harder as an adult to feel excitement like that. He may have turned 9, but I hope that joyful exuberance carries with him for many more years.

This past week my son turned 6. The thought of having a 6 year old has filled me with more emotion than I anticipated. It not only brought to light the fact that six whole years have gone by since our family of two became a family of three, but also that my little boy, my first baby, is really growing up.

Between this and the going-to-school full time thing, my heart is a wreck.

I love watching my children grow. Each week, month and year brings with it a new adventure. A new challenge as a parent (some of them I could do without) and more fun. My children continue to develop a special, unique personality that belongs to only themselves, that can not be duplicated and yet is shared with us daily.

These are the gifts I receive from them on the day of their birth each year.

Their smiles, hugs and how they are discovering themselves are the rewards of parenthood.

I look at my towering 6 year old with the memory of an elephant, a sense of humour like one of the three stooges and the ability to choreograph every moment of his life to song and dance and I see my happiness. With the past six years tucked gently behind me, in a place that will always be held close to my heart, I can’t help but see the horizon – the future that he and his sister have in store for us, and for themselves.

Birthdays make me reflect. And this year I am reflecting with a smile and a pop-rock tune in my heart. Because that’s how my newly turned 6 year old likes it.

Every year, on my children’s birthdays, I reflect how time is passing quickly. I look at them growing out of baby stages, then toddler stages, and into wonderful little people and feel my heart swell with pride, joy, happiness and love.

Today my first born turned 5 years old and once again I find myself reflecting.

What is it about this milestone that seems so much, bigger? It seems more meaningful somehow. Is it because he’s speaking more clearly and more often? Is it because he is able to do ‘big boy’ games that a year ago were more difficult? Is it simply all in my head that turning 5 years old is huge?

No matter what the cause, I reflect on the quickening passage of time, and how 5 years ago I was a new mother for the first time. How it felt to hold him, to look at him. How the constant worry doesn’t seem to dwindle each year.

Afternoon snuggles with him today have confirmed one thing though: Nothing beats those snuggles, and he’s definitely still little enough to cuddle with his mama. Even though age 5 seems so much older, he’s still a young child. My first baby. A little kiddo really, and that’s the way I like it right now.

This post is a Momstown Monday post featured monthly. In it, the founder of www.momstown.ca talks about August birthdays – babies and businesses. From A Little Bit of Momsense, we wish the wonderful Momstown a very happy birthday!

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August really is a huge birth month for me.
On August 15, 2005 I became a mother for the very first time. We welcomed a tiny, 4 pound 11 ounce, baby girl, Lauren Eby, into our lives at exactly 6pm.
From the very beginning, she’s broken me in for motherhood starting with the complications of her pregnancy with her stubborn growth delay and the jack-knife frank breech position she chose, despite hours of headstands to convince her otherwise.
Most people assume her low birth weight was due to being premature, but Lauren was practically full term at 37 weeks. Her environment was toxic. The placenta had torn and split into a thin barbell shape instead of the healthy robust placenta most babies have to pull from. The placenta wasn’t ideal, but with regular monitoring it didn’t seem dire. Yet, her growth continued to slow and a c-section was quickly planned.
Upon delivery, the doctors discovered the remaining placenta was ¾ clotted, virtually dead and of no use. My baby had been trying desperately to grow with no help from me. Motherhood guilt set in early.
Once born, my tiny baby, who looked like she was wearing a coat 2 sizes too big with her skin all wrinkly and saggy on her long limbs, waited to be fattened up by the all-you-can-eat-breastmilk-buffet. On the day Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, four days after her birth, we were sent home with a shrunken 4 pound 4 ounce baby and wished luck with our bundle who was lighter than her carseat.
I had one main job – feed the baby. Catch this baby up.
And feed I did, with a non-stop passion that she responded to with a non-stop appetite. For the first 6 weeks of her life, Lauren ate around the clock, 40 minute nursing sessions were divided by 20 minute naps and then repeated. Twenty-four hours a day.
It was utterly exhausting. Every time she weighed in (frequently!) if the scale moved up I felt like a good mother. If it didn’t move up enough, I felt like a failure. I sat for hours breastfeeding and watching the CNN Hurricane coverage while I felt like I was in my own private hurricane, scrambling to do everything I could, but still feeling lost in the storm.
I finally cheered with delight on Lauren’s 5 week birthday that she was a full 5 pounds. I celebrated every single ¼ ounce she gained. Visitors were frightened and hesitant to hold her because she was so tiny and gaunt. Friends looked at me oddly when I announced the baby’s gain in tiny ounce increments. But that was my life, my sole purpose was to care for, and feed, my sweet tiny baby.
When Lauren was 7 weeks old, I stumbled accidently into a public health run mother’s group at a local centre. After weeks of caesarean recovery and no more than 20 minutes of sleep in a row, I was elated to find other mothers. I lay my 7 week baby down next to what seemed to be giant older babies and quickly lost my excitement as I realised the other babies were all younger. Meanwhile Lauren was still dressed in preemie clothes. At home she looked chubby, in a group she looked wrong. My perfect baby didn’t seem right. I went home and nursed straight through the night, desperate to increase my milk supply and make my baby grow.
Religiously I returned to that weekly group with the giant babies. Thank God for that group because as I focused on catching Lauren up to her peers, I found my own peers in the neighbourhood mothers in that group. I felt gratitude, very close to true love, to the public health nurses who offered to hold my baby while pushing me towards the free snacks and other moms. The lactation consultant visited bi-weekly and I came armed with questions about if I was feeding her “too much” like my in-laws claimed.
Mostly, I came to see the other exhausted moms and hear about their week. That Wednesday group was an oasis in the fog of early motherhood. I lived for Wednesdays.
Then we moved. August 2006, one week before we celebrated Lauren’s 1st Birthday, we moved from our cosy city neighbourhood with my tight-knit mom group friends to a larger house in the suburbs where we knew no one. Happy Birthday August was the birthday of our move and a new start in a new place.
By then, my scrawny infant was an average size 12 month old, energetic, funny and still perfect. Being alone in motherhood, in the suburbs, was not fun. All the old insecurities came back as I wandered the empty neighbourhood streets with my stroller, searching for someone like me.

Six months later the idea of momstown was born and 6 months after that, one week shy of Lauren’s 2nd Birthday, another August baby was born. This baby was called momstown.
On August 7, 2007 the very first momstown website and group, what is now momstown Burlington, went live. All the firsts – the first tradeshow, the first print run of postcards, the first momstown event – it was like a baby’s first food or first step – well noted and jubilant.
This August is momstown’s 4th Birthday. Every year when we celebrate momstown’s birthday it co-incides with planning my own little girl’s birthday party and that’s a bittersweet mixture. I nursed my baby around the clock when she was young and I have nursed momstown around the clock too. I celebrate my daughter’s milestones and momstown’s. Owning one’s own business is so similar to having a child, there are painful moments but the love and pride make any hardship worthwhile.
The little momstown idea, was much like Lauren, a petite concept at first but after 4 years of consistent and constant nursing and attention, fuelling it with ideas and strategy, momstown is starting to plump up and fill out. With 18 regional locations, we’ve caught up and gone beyond. I am beyond proud of momstown and do consider it my other child.
August births will always have a special spot in my heart.I hope you will all join in and celebrate our 4th Birthday this August and come to our live birthday events, or online Twitter andFacebook parties. Happy Birthday!

Welcome to A Little Bit of Momsense! My name is Rebecca and I'm chatting about parenting, family friendly activities, yummy recipes, family travel, and living a life full of love and laughter. Thanks for stopping by!